Honda goes weird and wonderful at the Tokyo Motor Show

We know little about the Sports EV but we do know Honda needs to build it.

We know almost nothing about the Honda Sports EV concept. But we want one.

Is it destined for production?

If enough people tell Honda to build it, perhaps the company will listen.

We do know there's going to be a production version of this little Urban EV, although maybe only in Europe.

The Urban EV's interior. Yo, Honda! Sell this one in the US, please.

Bench seats make a comeback.

The RoboCas is a good deal more wacky.

When it's not helping your coffee cart business, it will share your fun.

Or entertain your kids?

OK, this one makes me think of a cute, robotic Pied Piper-type deal. A robot that steals children?

... and then leaves its human owner in the desert. OK, I admit I've taken a dark turn here.

NeuV was first shown at CES.

It's part transport, part personal assistant.

In September, Honda stole the Frankfurt Auto Show with its totally adorable Urban EV. On Wednesday, the company showed there's more where that came from, using the Tokyo Motor Show to debut the Sports EV. If the Urban EV channeled designs from the past like the Z600, the Sports EV looks heavily influenced by Toyota's drop-dead gorgeous 2000GT. Unfortunately, we know almost nothing about this wonderful little electric vehicle. Honda says that it "designed the sporty electric car to deliver a feeling of joy and emotional unity to the drive, achieved by efficiently combining the EV powerunit and AI technology in a compact bodyshape."

As with the Urban EV, we have just one message for Honda: build it, in volume, and sell it here in the US. Please.

Electrification was obviously a key message for Honda at its home auto show this year. In addition to unveiling the Sports EV, it also brought along the Urban EV (which will go into production in Europe in 2019), and NeuV, an autonomous concept car first seen at CES that is part personal-transport, part personal assistant.

Surely the weirdest concept has to be RoboCas. If the press images are anything to go by, it's a robot that can help you with karaoke, double as a food cart, and even babysit children. I'm not going to lie, I kinda want one...

84 Reader Comments

Surely the weirdest concept has to be RoboCas. If the press images are anything to go by, it's a robot that can help you with karaoke, double as a food cart, and can even babysit children. I'm not going to lie, I kinda want one...

What, a children? Most people grow their own, but there's usually a local co-op you can go to and find some excess.

Surely the weirdest concept has to be RoboCas. If the press images are anything to go by, it's a robot that can help you with karaoke, double as a food cart, and can even babysit children. I'm not going to lie, I kinda want one...

What, a children? Most people grow their own, but there's usually a local co-op you can go to and find some excess.

Of course they'll tone down the design language for the final product. What struck me is this compete reversal by Honda, giving up on Hydrogen and embracing EV.

A more insightful leadership would have skated to where the puck is going than to the puck. But at least it's not already in the net.

I say this as someone who bought one of the new 2017 Civic hatchbacks. Best car I've ever driven by far. I hope Honda continues to get out of their hum drum past.

And yes, an S2000 replacement would be awesome! Just make it bigger. I'm 6'2" and over 200 lbs. I felt like I was putting on a tight spandex pair of pants to put my legs down by the pedals in the last S2000.

The Sport EV looks.... not that great. Trying to modernize a classic design doesn't really work out too well. I'm curious if it would look more acceptable with a more consistent color paint job, but the bubbly design doesn't look 'cool' like I would imagine a sporty car should look. The interior looks pretty odd too... But hey, it's just a concept car, so I doubt any real production vehicle will look remotely similar.

As far as recent concepts go, I did like Mazda's. Prettier than Honda's, and maybe slightly more elements that could actually make it through to production IMO.

The interior is pure concept car (side impact crash testing alone rules out a flat bench seat in any modern car) but that exterior could absolutely be produced, though perhaps not at a price point that you'd need for a city car.

The Sport EV looks.... not that great. Trying to modernize a classic design doesn't really work out too well. I'm curious if it would look more acceptable with a more consistent color paint job, but the bubbly design doesn't look 'cool' like I would imagine a sporty car should look. The interior looks pretty odd too... But hey, it's just a concept car, so I doubt any real production vehicle will look remotely similar.

Disagree 100%, using retro elements has worked well for the new Thunderbird, the fifth generation Mustang, the third generation Challenger, the New Beetle, etc.

I find myself wondering what 9000 RPM from an electric engine in a convertible would *feel* like. Like maybe you have a giant blender in front of your legs.

The motor in my Tesla Roadster redlines at 14000 RPM. It feels like. . . angels pushing. There is no vibration. However, I can hear a little bit of Jetsons-like gear whine when accelerating or decelerating (with regen). I love it.

That image of the RoboCas with the hat totally killed me. Oh, and the Sports EV concept is gorgeous on the outside. Problem is; Honda have a long history of utterly brilliant concept cars, only equaled by their lengthy history of having almost all their concepts watered down to mundanity by the time they reach production.

Edit:To be fair, probably all Japanese manufacturers are guilty of overly diluting their concepts. Subaru have teased brilliant looking WRX concepts for more than a decade, only to give us bloated sedans with odd proportions for the subsequent production versions. They showed off the rather handsome looking Viviz Performance concept at this show, and I guarantee all we'll get in a couple of years is a dumpy hatchback with pointy lights.

The Sport EV looks.... not that great. Trying to modernize a classic design doesn't really work out too well. I'm curious if it would look more acceptable with a more consistent color paint job, but the bubbly design doesn't look 'cool' like I would imagine a sporty car should look. The interior looks pretty odd too... But hey, it's just a concept car, so I doubt any real production vehicle will look remotely similar.

Disagree 100%, using retro elements has worked well for the new Thunderbird, the fifth generation Mustang, the third generation Challenger, the New Beetle, etc.

Sorry, I can't agree about the New Beetle. That's one classic car necro gone horribly wrong. Now, if you'd mentioned the new Mini...

I'll probably get some flack for this, but I stopped looking at concept cars a long time ago. You never get what you see. They're entirely dog and pony shows for the investors to get them jazzed up about the "what might be's".

Even though the odds strongly indicate no concept car shown today will ever be seen like that in the wild tomorrow.

It used to be kind of fun to see the what-might-be's. But they've gotten kinda weird over the years, so it's not as much fun as it used to be. Once it mostly went from "I'd like to get one of those" to mostly "I wouldn't be caught dead in that", I gave up.

These days, I look at the features instead of the fantasy model they're wrapped in since those will have a better chance of appearing in car at some time in one's future. In that vein, I'm sort of like a person who gets Playboy actually for the articles, since I know I'm never going to be driving what's in the pictures.

That sports EV concept sure has a late 60's design aesthetic. And, IMO, the head and tail lights look really weird, too.

And styats why I don't like it. Ford, Chevy, and... Fiat/chrystler have already done it for almost a decade now. It's time to stop and make a car that doesn't look like a brick that has it's edges sanded off with a wedge on top.